‘It is gravely concerning that an influential slice of the media, over many years, has sought to insulate themselves from taking accountability for what they say or print - even when they know it to be distorted, false or invasive beyond reason. When power is enjoyed without responsibility, the trust we all place in this much-needed industry is degraded.
‘There is a real human cost to this way of doing business and it affects every corner of society. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have watched people they know - as well as complete strangers - have their lives completely pulled apart for no good reason, other than the fact that salacious gossip boosts advertising revenue.
‘With that said, please note that The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will not be engaging with your outlet. There will be no corroboration and zero engagement. This is also a policy being instated for their communications team, in order to protect that team from the side of the industry that readers never see.
‘This policy is not about avoiding criticism. It’s not about shutting down public conversation or censoring accurate reporting. Media have every right to report on and indeed have an opinion on The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, good or bad. But it can’t be based on a lie.
‘They also want to be very clear: this is not in any way a blanket policy for all media.
‘The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are looking forward to working with journalists and media organisations all over the world, engaging with grassroots media, regional and local media, and young, up-and-coming journalists, to spotlight issues and causes that so desperately need acknowledging. And they look forward to doing whatever they can to help further opportunities for more diverse and underrepresented voices, who are needed now more than ever.
‘What they won’t do is offer themselves up as currency for an economy of clickbait and distortion. We are encouraged that this new approach will be heard and respected.’
Not surprisingly, this letter overshadowed Elizabeth II’s birthday, proving once again that no occasion was so significant or insignificant that Harry and Meghan’s activities would not swamp it. No sophisticate reading it would ever have doubted that it was crafted by slick, clever American media manipulators. Aside from the language, which was pure Americana, the tone was New York knuckledusters dipped in Malibu saltwater. It was a tour de force of cant and hypocrisy, whose main purpose was to shut out those organs of the press who had not been sufficiently adulatory while deliberately confusing the issues and thereby deceiving the unwitting public into accepting that Meghan and Harry’s suffering equated with the ‘real human cost. . …this way of doing business. . … affects’ its genuine victims.
As one of those people whose ‘lives [have been] completely pulled apart for no good reason, other than the fact that salacious gossip boosts advertising revenue’ over the last forty six years - and who has sued all four companies successfully and is in fact suing one as I write this - I am better qualified than most to say that Harry and Meghan’s actions were unjustified, unjustifiable, and dangerous to the wellbeing of the British people and the freedom of the British press. I was bemused that they and their advisors could have had the temerity to so cynically attach their cause to the real sufferings of others, myself included, as if a broken fingernail equates to the loss of an arm.
What Meghan and Harry were trying to do wasn’t only unconstitutional. It was a direct challenge to the protocols by which two of this country’s greatest institutions, namely the monarchy and the press, conduct themselves. They were trying to justify creating a new and dangerous policy which could weaken the whole edifice upon which our freedom of expression was based. Their claims to victimhood were spurious. Yes, they had been criticised, but by and large those criticisms have been based in fact. They were not based upon lies. Just who did they think they were, seeking to overturn and thereby endanger established protocols which were finely calibrated to protect everyone in this country, not only those who were written about, or those who did the writing, but those who worked in the newspaper industry? Because they felt they had been wronged? They were being reckless and uncaring of the consequences their actions potentially had to the nation as a whole. In their sensitivity and, dare I say it, misguided sense of how entitled they were to protect their own feelings, they had equated those feelings with the greater injury they exposed everyone else to as they weakened the press. Could they truly be so blind as to where reality lay that they genuinely believed their wounded feelings justified endangering a whole industry, when there were already safeguards built into the system whereby those who were damaged could gain protection or justice?
What made Harry and Meghan’s actions so fearsome was that they seemed to be mindless of the consequences to anyone’s interests but their own.
Ian Murray, the Executive Director of the Society of Editors, which aims to protect media freedom, responded by explaining, ‘Although the Duke and Duchess say they support a free press and all it stands for there is no escaping their actions here amount to censorship. By appearing to dictate which media they will work with and which they will ignore they, no doubt unintentionally, give succour to the rich and powerful everywhere to use their example as an excuse to attack the media when it suits them.’
While Mr Murray might have thought their ploy unintentional, I had no doubt, having researched how aggressively, indeed abusively, Sunshine Sachs approaches any segment of the media which does not fall down at the feet of its glorious clients and lick the soles of their dirty shoes as if they were gods to be worshipped, that Harry, Meghan and their media advisors had set out, very
